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Let's Get Personal With Customer Data

You open your inbox and see an offer from a retailer you know. Which would you be more likely to respond to? A flashy-looking but generic coupon or a personalized, highly-relevant offer based on your unique interests, preferences or previously-purchased items? If you’re like me, you’re likely to store away or ignore the flashy coupon, but you’ll immediately click on the personalized offer. Everyone likes to feel special, and when that recognition comes in the form of personalized retail offers, it encourages impulse buying. Want to make your customers feel special and buy more? You’ll need to start with a unified, 360-degree view of your customers.

Your business is likely already collecting customer data through numerous channels: point of sale (POS) systems, social media, mobile apps, websites, email newsletters, and more. The next step is to use that data to drive sales, to help customer retention, slow churn, and build brand loyalty. Some would say that’s using their own information against them, but in truth, its actually using their data to improve the entire shopping experience for your customers.

Marketers are constantly looking for ways to build bigger market share for their brands and are realizing that customer data is the key. For example, marketers can use customer data such as sales history to know if a customer shops online or in the store, or they can use demographics to track trends in spending, or track actions made across different channels to know the best ways to interact with their customers. All of this information can unlock the “Golden Record”’ – the ultimate prize in the data world, and what all marketers are chasing these days. The Golden Record allows marketers to see the integrated customer journey across the entire life-cycle of the customer.

Marketers can drill down into these Golden Records to get to know their customers’ interests and spending habits, and when you know this level of detail, many more options are open. Should you send them an email coupon or a coupon in the mail? Should you send them an in-store or an online coupon? Should you notify them on your app about a sale this weekend or should you send it in a tweet?

With data, you can also begin to understand any seasonality behind your customers’ purchases. For example, if a customer always buys pants from your company at “back to school” time, and always goes into the store to do so, you could send them a targeted campaign to purchase a belt, knowing they are going to buy pants. Maybe the opening of a new store is right down the street from a customer who always shops online and you want to see if you can convert them into an in-store shopper, so you mail them a postcard with a coupon and a map showing the new location of the store. The possibilities are really endless.

Think this all sounds too good to be true? Let me assure you it is not. With a Customer Data Platform (CDP) you can unlock all this customer information– and take action in real time. Marketers can build fast target lists and create personal campaigns within minutes. And, along with the ability to analyze, evaluate, monitor, pause, change, and relaunch campaigns in real time, marketers can do all of this with little to no involvement from IT. Marketers can actually use their customers’ data to benefit their daily lives.

I know when I receive an offer it has to be targeted to me in order for me to take action on it. If you want my money, you need to make it worth my while. The way to do that? By using a CDP to build a unified view of my shopping habits.

Ready to learn how QuickPivot's CDP can help your business get personal, visit our website.

This blog was written and contributed by Rich McHugh, Account Executive at QuickPivot.